


If At First...

by maaaaa



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:53:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23739400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maaaaa/pseuds/maaaaa
Kudos: 8





	If At First...

The report of a nearby musket echoed off the walls of the ravine a split second before the tiny ball slammed into his left temple, shattered his skull, and embedded itself in his brain with an internal reverberating thud.

A canopy of trees in a palette of autumn glory had transfixed his sight and rooted him, stock-still, to his sentry post. The colors, blotched and daubed by Nature’s brush against the brilliant azure October sky, ran together and dribbled into rivulets which streamed across his vision just before the last breath left his body. He fell to the earth, oblivious to the warm, pungent embrace of the rotted undergrowth.

All his senses, acutely alive for one last time, sang his death-song before shrouding him in blue and easing him into the blackness.

*****

He became aware of the light in that subtle half-awake way one becomes aware of dawn slipping into a darkened room around the edges of a drawn curtain. Sentient thought seeped in slowly and he became attuned to his surroundings. The light was a pleasant honey-gold and tingled of intimate acquaintance.

He felt corporeal, yet knew he wasn’t, and still was. The feeling was more annoying than unnerving. There was another being close by, but it wasn’t until he spoke that it, too, took on a spectral form.

“Pete?” he questioned, the reality of his vocalization also chancy. He squinted at the other being, but it insisted on wobbling rather than coalescing into a recognizable shape. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Peter, is that you?” he asked flatly, though he had meant to sound demanding. He was aware even as he spoke that he wasn’t sure who it was he thought was there.

“No,” the specter replied in an overly caustic tone, not unlike fingernails scratched slowly across a blackboard to draw attention. “If you were at the pearly gates, you’d be seeing pearly gates, do you see pearly gates?” it sniped in an excruciatingly condescending, familiar voice.

The specter did him the favor of becoming more or less an animate looking form, but the only thing that let him know exactly who it was he was with were the eyes. Those damn blue eyes. He’d know those eyes anywhere, in any dimension, on any astral plane, at any day of reckoning.

“Let’s review, Sentinel, shall we?” his guide said in a sweet voice dripping with anxiousness to point out what had landed him, make that them, once again in limbo.

The light surrounding them flickered in a strobe-light show. The Sentinel’s most recent life flashed around them in bits and pieces.

He couldn't even begin to understand what he'd done to deserve this.

** ** **

“Sentinel?” the sentinel asked shakily. He hoped if he sounded confused enough his guide might take pity on him and move things along quickly.

“We can be here for the blink of an eye or the life span of Methuselah,” the guide answered, “it’s up to you.” A smug shrug, felt rather than actually seen, accompanied the threat. “You wanna play dumb? No problemo. You,” he spoke slowly, enunciating carefully, “are a sentinel. S-E-N-T-I-N-E-L.”

“OK, geez, all right,” the sentinel groused. The full implication of what he was slammed into him with startling clarity as the rapid-fire slide show going on around him dazzled in 3-D.

“Hey, it’s not like I don’t get my ass chewed by the Big Guy every single time we end up here and I have to take the heat for our latest fiasco before you decide to waltz in,” the guide retorted.

“Here? Where, exactly, is here again?” the sentinel ventured gamely, truly wanting to get up to speed and move things along.

The guide jumped right in, his arms and hands whooshing through the nothingness, “Limbo…Purgatory…No Man’s Land…Gehenna…Hamistagan---.”

“All right, all ready,” the sentinel interrupted the recital. “I’m sorry I asked.”

The atmosphere surrounding them rattled and swayed with a long-suffering puff of cool air and the scent of warm stale beer wafted gently on the currents.

“Let’s talk about your gift.”

“Gift?”

“You really need to learn to except your gift for what it is and deal with it, once and for all, sooner or later, in one of our reincarnations, or we’ll never move on.”

“Gift.”

“Okay, yeah, you’re right, we need to deal with it---,”

“Maybe I don’t want to deal with this gift. And who says it’s a gift anyway?”

“Well, the Maker.”

“Right. The Maker. How about you tell the Maker I’m not so crazy about this gift.”

“I don’t have any clout with the Maker. You think I get to talk to the Maker?”

“You said, just before, that he chews your ass---,”

“No, I said the Big Guy. Damn, why’s it I’m always the one that knows what’s going on and you conveniently need a refresher course? The Big Guy is not the Maker. He’s a sort of overseer. He shows up every now and then in our lifetimes to offer support, if needed. Not that we always need it. But we don’t always end up in an Age that’s accepting of someone with your unique abilities. We’ve done pretty good a few times---,”

“We?”

“Of course, we. We’re a package deal. Sentinel and Guide. You’d think it’d be Guide and Sentinel, alphabetical, plus it sounds way cooler, but no, it’s always Sentinel and Guide---,”

“A few times?”

“Well, no one gets it right the first time, straight off the bat. And we’ve had more than our fair share of screw-ups.” And instead of sharing the few pretty good times, the guide proceeded with re-capping some of their less noteworthy sagas. “Let’s see. We did fairly well that one time until you fell for the red-haired high priestess with legs up to here. And then there was the time when I latched on to the wrong sentinel all together and we went on a crime spree across France while you spent most of your life locked away in a loony bin. In fact, we missed each other entirely in another lifetime too. Then there was the time we almost got burned at the stake, and the time we were set adrift at sea. Sure coulda used the Big Guy’s help those times. And there was this one other time? We totally misused your senses.” Snorted chuckling resounded softly on the sentinel’s hearing. “We had a great time, though. Until reckoning day, of course.”

The sentinel held his palms against his temples and shook his head as the guide rambled on and on and on in a sing-song litany of their past lives.

He really couldn't even begin to understand what he'd done to deserve this.

** ** **

When he became coherent again, the sentinel realized his guide was nudging him gently and patting his back, all without coming anywhere near him. Nonsense words, soothingly coaxing, lulled him back to the present.

“Whoa,” the guide observed once he knew the sentinel was with him again. “You’ve never zoned out in the Hereafter before.” He indicated the freeze-frame tableau surrounding them by a head jerk. “More times than not, it’s a zone-out that’ll do it. See? You slipped off to sentinel la-la land because of focusing on all the pretty colors.”

The sentinel studied the face of the man he’d recently been, the features reflecting a blank sereneness in the moments just before he now heard the click of the trigger and the scraping of flint against steel. Sounds he should have heard then if he hadn’t…

“My fault, really,” the guide mumbled, interrupting the sentinel’s musing. “I never seem to be able to get you to truly accept your gift and help you control it.” He glanced up and a shy smile fleetingly crossed his face as he added, “Except for that time I mentioned earlier. Boy did we catch it for that.”

The sentinel looked at his guide, once again recognizing the blue eyes. “Gideon? Gideon, right? You’re, you were, that scrappy little fella that tried to---,”

“Yup, that’s me,” the guide cut in with a mirthless chuckle, “Didn’t work though. You refused to listen. Not your fault, you’d had a rough life, didn’t need some snot-nosed youngun trying to tell you you had special abilities, after being told your whole life you were an oddity. I shoulda been more insistent. I just wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t willing to make the sacrifice that might have convinced you,” he scolded, talking to himself now, rather than the sentinel.

“Hold on, Chief,” the sentinel butted in with an overpowering sense of protectiveness. He didn’t particularly like that his guide seemed willing to take the fall for both of them. “I thought you said this was a two-man show.” Previous reckonings imploded on his memory. “There’re a lot of influences in both our lives that are out of our control, right?”

“Well, yeah, I suppose,” the guide conceded. “Environment, upbringing, iffy choices, bad decisions; those have all set us on the wrong path before. Maybe we need a signal, like a secret handshake or something?” he enthused, suddenly brightening. “For the next Life? Some sort of subliminal sign that’ll whap us upside our subconscious?”

“Like what?” the sentinel asked with a knowing laugh, hoping they’d get it right the next time, hoping maybe the eyes would be a giveaway somewhere other than post-mortem.

“You’ll know, when the time’s right,” the guide stated with determination and a far-off gleam in his eyes. “You’ll see. I won’t fail you again.”

The honey-gold light began to fade and the image of his guide became gray and fuzzy.

“No, wait!” the sentinel hollered, not liking the implication of the promise as his guide’s voice drifted into the void. “No,” he whispered desperately as he, too, drifted off.

** ** ** **

Jim Ellison eased himself onto the couch and sunk into the cushions. He propped his feet on the coffee table and let his head fall back. He closed his eyes and sighed contentedly as he listened to the sounds of his best friend and partner, his guide, Blair Sandburg, happily hogging more than his fair share of the hot water in the shower. The kid was humming and splashing, interjecting words here and there, singing in an off-key warble.

Jim felt content and relaxed. More so than he’d ever been in his entire life. He let his senses roam. He reached out with what was now practiced ease, cataloguing the sounds and smells, the feel and savor of his city. Nothing was overwhelming; everything was in perfect balance.

Jim was finally at peace with his chosen path, and able to deal with Blair’s place in it. He smiled as he heard Blair making sappy little comments, as he did every night from some recess of the loft for Jim’s benefit, as a reminder that he was right where he wanted to be too.

So much was right with Jim’s world. Even after the dissertation mess. No, he thought, furrowing his brow, it was because of the dissertation mess. Blair had had to self-destruct, giving up his dreams, in order to prove to Jim what he should have known all along.

God, he was such an ass…a happy, ready to take on the world with his guide, Sentinel-ass. His smile grew into a blissful grin as Blair came up behind him, whapped him upside the head and groused about supper not being on the table.

He couldn't even begin to understand what he'd done to deserve this.


End file.
